Fear Agent
Encyclopedia
Fear Agent is a science fiction
comic book
series
by Rick Remender
with art by Tony Moore
and Jerome Opena, who alternate on story arcs. The series is published by Dark Horse Comics
and previously by Image Comics
.
The series stars the rugged alcoholic Texas spaceman Heath Huston, the supposed last Fear Agent, in a series of fast-paced adventures. The series is notable for its emphasis on action, adventure, horror, and plot twists rather than realism or scientific detail; Remender claims in the first issue that "science fiction has lost its stones" and that Fear Agent is his attempt to fight that trend. Many incidents in the early issues are unexplained until many issues later to reinforce this.
, published by Image Comics
. It ran for 11 issues. In September 2006
, Dark Horse Comics
announced that Fear Agent would be moving to Dark Horse. The company reprinted the first trade paperback
collection (originally published by Image), released on April 28, 2007
. The second volume followed on May 30th, 2007
.
On June 13, 2007, Dark Horse began Fear Agent: The Last Goodbye, a four-part mini-series
telling of the alien invasion and creation of the Fear Agents by way of flashback after issue 10's events.
After completion of The Last Goodbye and a one-shot "Tales of the Fear Agent: Twelve Steps in One," Dark Horse resumed chronological numbering for the series with number 17, making "The Last Goodbye" issues 12-15 and the one-shot #16.
The series went on a hiatus with issue #27 (cover dated June 2009), following Remender signing an exclusive deal with Marvel
, but restarts in July 2010 for the last five-issue storyline "Out of Step".
-studying redneck from Texas
, Heath spends his days as a borderline alcoholic conversing with Annie, the A.I.
system of his spaceship.
After a close escape from the planet Frazterga, Heath is forced to investigate a space outpost
that he finds abandoned and unable to communicate. As it turns out, the compound has been invaded by Feeders, a plasmoid-like octopoid race that do nothing other than devour using powerful stomach acids and reproduce more of their kind.
Familiar with the Feeders' patterns and the race that uses them in biological warfare, the Dressites, the newly refueled Heath discovers the Dressites intend to destroy Earth. Some time earlier, they nearly had destroyed the planet.
Heading back to Earth, Heath picks up Mara, another survivor from the mostly decimated Earth. Unfortunately, Heath is sidetracked into joining with a race of seemingly primitive aliens, only he finds there is more than meets the eye in the situation.
As events progress, it is revealed Heath is the lone survivor because all of the other Fear Agents were killed in an unknown incident. Adding more danger, Heath discovers one of the "primitive" race is actually planning to betray him and his brethren by giving him to the Dressite Empire, who have posted a bounty on his head for a prior incident. Luckily for Heath, the primitives' betrayer kills him before he can do much about it.
Heath's bad luck leads to a race of aliens responsible for the fabric of time, the Keepers, imprison Heath, who is unapologetic. After several time traveling incidents all ending with the Keepers jailing him, and when he retaliates after learning the Keepers plan to restore the Teteldian Empire, Heath is locked up for life, but subsequently freed by them.
Mara ends up having sex with Heath, and he receives a mysterious message from a different version of Mara during the night. Heath sweeps this aside, and is determined to return to Earth to see if his wife, Charlotte is alive. When he arrives, he finds Earth overrun by the Dressen Empire, and can't find evidence of Charlotte being alive. He gives her up for dead.
An army of Dressites attack Heath, and as he prepares for the death of the last Fear Agent, a small army of Free Agents rescue him. When the group return to their base, Heath discovers Charlotte is now the head of the Earth rebellion, but his relief melts as the Houston luck shows that Charlotte no longer considers Heath her husband for mysterious reasons. Charlotte is now married to one of the Fear Agents, who seems to be a much better person than Heath.
Hours after returning home with his father, trucker Heath's family is lost to an alien invasion, with the exception of Charlotte. Hours later, it seems the entire population of Earth is decimated, with Heath and his wife stuck in the middle of it all.
A handful of survivors end up in an abandoned warehouse, caught in the crossfire of a skirmish between a race of humanoid amoeba and a race of robots, and Heath finds some jumpsuits. He motivates the survivors so that they will begin a resistance against these aliens, and show the invaders the meaning of the word "Fear". The Fear Agents are born. Assimilating weaponry from defeated soldiers on both sides of the conflict, the Fear Agents gain advanced technology, such as the ability to travel deep space, worm hole teleportation, rocket packs, and powerful blasters to offset the forces of Dressites and Tetaldians, as the Agents discover the races are named, in a fight that Earth just happened to fall in the middle of. Holding the line for humanity, Heath loses many of his friends, but his iron will doesn't succumb to the terrors he conquers daily as a Fear Agent.
As the battle rages on and humanity has regained a foothold in the battle, the Fear Agents amass an army of survivors and invade the Dressite base on the moon. Meanwhile on Earth, the Fear Agents discover one of their own is a traitor who uses the worm hole teleportation tech to lead the Dressites to their base, and has told the Dressites of the Fear Agents' plan to invade the moon base, allowing the aliens to set a clever trap which leads to a mass eradication of the Fear Agents, leaving Heath to believe he's one of a few remaining resistance members.
After losing so many of his comrades, Heath is enraged beyond reason and takes a bomb to the Dressite homeworld. Unaware of just how powerful the bomb is, he unleashes it while his allies are slaughtered on the moon and at home. When Heath returns to Earth, Charlotte leaves him-- the bomb killed trillions of innocent Dressite mothers and children. This leads to Heath's having a "capture alive if possible" bounty posted on his head by the Dressites, who hold no sympathy for the innocents murdered in their war on Earth, only wanting to punish him for the genocide of their own.
Heath goes to the Feeders' homeworld to find their natural predator, but he is stuck with his number one rival in his current life, Charlotte's new husband. The race on this planet targets the two for a battle to the death, but even as Heath is losing, his rival impales himself on Heath's weapon, revealing that the daughter he raised as his own is actually Heath's. Heath is sent free.
Meanwhile, Mara leads some Fear Agent survivors including Charlotte on a different mission. Charlotte catches Mara's act of treachery with the Dressites, that she will be given Levi's location in exchange for that of her fellow Fear Agents'. Charlotte's team ends up stranded on-planet, stuck with aliens that used religion to reunite with their god, but the experiment went awry and left them all soul-eating ghouls. Mara and Charlotte team up after losing some agents, and along the way, Mara sends a message to the past and hopes to make what will happen clear to a Heath in that timeline, but he disregarded her message.
Heath makes his way on-planet and saves Charlotte, and Mara escapes to the pirate ship. She discovers a Dressite telling one of the pirates about Heath's bounty, but kills the pirate before he can tell his comrades. Heath tries to convince Mara not to kill Levi since it will spiral into more Galactic civil war. Levi takes the distraction's opportunity to sneak a gun after Mara's laser blast takes one of his arms away. Levi shoots Mara in the back and kills her, and throws Heath out the airlock. Without his oxygen tank and running out of time, Heath admits to himself that he saw Levi taking the gun and let him shoot Mara anyway.
:
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
series
Ongoing series
The term "ongoing series" is used in contrast to limited series , a one shot , a graphic novel, or a trade paperback...
by Rick Remender
Rick Remender
Rick Remender is an American comic book writer and artist who resides in Portland, Oregon. He is best known for his work on Marvel Comics' Punisher series, as well as Fear Agent, Uncanny X-Force, and Venom.-Career:...
with art by Tony Moore
Tony Moore (artist)
Michael Anthony "Tony" Moore is an American comic book artist, whose work consists mainly of genre pieces, most notably in horror and science fiction, with titles such as The Walking Dead, Fear Agent and The Exterminators.-Career:...
and Jerome Opena, who alternate on story arcs. The series is published by Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
and previously by Image Comics
Image Comics
Image Comics is a United States comic book publisher. It was founded in 1992 by high-profile illustrators as a venue where creators could publish their material without giving up the copyrights to the characters they created, as creator-owned properties. It was immediately successful, and remains...
.
The series stars the rugged alcoholic Texas spaceman Heath Huston, the supposed last Fear Agent, in a series of fast-paced adventures. The series is notable for its emphasis on action, adventure, horror, and plot twists rather than realism or scientific detail; Remender claims in the first issue that "science fiction has lost its stones" and that Fear Agent is his attempt to fight that trend. Many incidents in the early issues are unexplained until many issues later to reinforce this.
Publication history
The series launched in October 20052005 in comics
- January :* January 3: Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit, dies at age 87.-April:*April 13:**DC Comics announces the discontinuation of its Humanoids and 2000 A.D. titles....
, published by Image Comics
Image Comics
Image Comics is a United States comic book publisher. It was founded in 1992 by high-profile illustrators as a venue where creators could publish their material without giving up the copyrights to the characters they created, as creator-owned properties. It was immediately successful, and remains...
. It ran for 11 issues. In September 2006
2006 in comics
-January:*January 1, 2006: Newsweek offer a look back at 2005 through editorial cartoons. *January 2, 2006: The Cincinnati Enquirer cartoonist Jim Borgman starts a blog to detail his creative process...
, Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
announced that Fear Agent would be moving to Dark Horse. The company reprinted the first trade paperback
Trade paperback (comics)
In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...
collection (originally published by Image), released on April 28, 2007
2007 in comics
-January:*January 10: Superman & Batman vs. Aliens & Predator released.*January 24: The Boys is canceled with issue #6.-February:*February 2: Newsarama reports that The Boys has been picked up by Dynamite Entertainment....
. The second volume followed on May 30th, 2007
2007 in comics
-January:*January 10: Superman & Batman vs. Aliens & Predator released.*January 24: The Boys is canceled with issue #6.-February:*February 2: Newsarama reports that The Boys has been picked up by Dynamite Entertainment....
.
On June 13, 2007, Dark Horse began Fear Agent: The Last Goodbye, a four-part mini-series
Limited series
A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....
telling of the alien invasion and creation of the Fear Agents by way of flashback after issue 10's events.
After completion of The Last Goodbye and a one-shot "Tales of the Fear Agent: Twelve Steps in One," Dark Horse resumed chronological numbering for the series with number 17, making "The Last Goodbye" issues 12-15 and the one-shot #16.
The series went on a hiatus with issue #27 (cover dated June 2009), following Remender signing an exclusive deal with Marvel
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
, but restarts in July 2010 for the last five-issue storyline "Out of Step".
1-4: Re-Ignition
Heath Huston is the last Fear Agent, a task force dedicated to eradicating alien threats to their home planet, Earth. A Mark TwainMark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
-studying redneck from Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, Heath spends his days as a borderline alcoholic conversing with Annie, the A.I.
A.i.
A.i. is a three-piece rock-electroclash band based from Los Angeles, California. The band consists of Nick Young , Zack Young , and Milen Kirov . In September 2007, A.i...
system of his spaceship.
After a close escape from the planet Frazterga, Heath is forced to investigate a space outpost
Outpost (military)
An Outpost in military terminology essentially means a detachment of troops stationed at a distance from the main force or formation, usually at a station in a remote or sparsely populated location, positioned to stand guard against unauthorized intrusions and surprise attacks; and the station...
that he finds abandoned and unable to communicate. As it turns out, the compound has been invaded by Feeders, a plasmoid-like octopoid race that do nothing other than devour using powerful stomach acids and reproduce more of their kind.
Familiar with the Feeders' patterns and the race that uses them in biological warfare, the Dressites, the newly refueled Heath discovers the Dressites intend to destroy Earth. Some time earlier, they nearly had destroyed the planet.
Heading back to Earth, Heath picks up Mara, another survivor from the mostly decimated Earth. Unfortunately, Heath is sidetracked into joining with a race of seemingly primitive aliens, only he finds there is more than meets the eye in the situation.
As events progress, it is revealed Heath is the lone survivor because all of the other Fear Agents were killed in an unknown incident. Adding more danger, Heath discovers one of the "primitive" race is actually planning to betray him and his brethren by giving him to the Dressite Empire, who have posted a bounty on his head for a prior incident. Luckily for Heath, the primitives' betrayer kills him before he can do much about it.
5-10: My War
Heath's luck still doesn't run out, when a race of aliens clone him and place his conscious mind in a new body. He sets out to travel backwards in time to stop the robotic Tetaldians, the second alien race that has targeted Earth for destruction. Flashbacks reveal that an alien invasion started and lead to the immediate deaths of Heath's son and father, explaining his hatred of the races. Heath successfully stops the Tetaldian threat early on.Heath's bad luck leads to a race of aliens responsible for the fabric of time, the Keepers, imprison Heath, who is unapologetic. After several time traveling incidents all ending with the Keepers jailing him, and when he retaliates after learning the Keepers plan to restore the Teteldian Empire, Heath is locked up for life, but subsequently freed by them.
Mara ends up having sex with Heath, and he receives a mysterious message from a different version of Mara during the night. Heath sweeps this aside, and is determined to return to Earth to see if his wife, Charlotte is alive. When he arrives, he finds Earth overrun by the Dressen Empire, and can't find evidence of Charlotte being alive. He gives her up for dead.
An army of Dressites attack Heath, and as he prepares for the death of the last Fear Agent, a small army of Free Agents rescue him. When the group return to their base, Heath discovers Charlotte is now the head of the Earth rebellion, but his relief melts as the Houston luck shows that Charlotte no longer considers Heath her husband for mysterious reasons. Charlotte is now married to one of the Fear Agents, who seems to be a much better person than Heath.
11: Along Came a Spider
An issue long 'Tales of the Fear Agent' illustrated by Italian illustrator Francesco Francavilla. A population of human flies pays Heath to protect them from a race of spiders slowly taking over their world. However, when Heath becomes impregnated with the spiders' eggs he becomes the planet's greatest threat."The Last Goodbye 1-4 (#12-15)
Heath leaves after finding out that Charlotte had left him, and walks outside the base on the moon. Mara follows him and he tells her the origins of the Fear Agents:Hours after returning home with his father, trucker Heath's family is lost to an alien invasion, with the exception of Charlotte. Hours later, it seems the entire population of Earth is decimated, with Heath and his wife stuck in the middle of it all.
A handful of survivors end up in an abandoned warehouse, caught in the crossfire of a skirmish between a race of humanoid amoeba and a race of robots, and Heath finds some jumpsuits. He motivates the survivors so that they will begin a resistance against these aliens, and show the invaders the meaning of the word "Fear". The Fear Agents are born. Assimilating weaponry from defeated soldiers on both sides of the conflict, the Fear Agents gain advanced technology, such as the ability to travel deep space, worm hole teleportation, rocket packs, and powerful blasters to offset the forces of Dressites and Tetaldians, as the Agents discover the races are named, in a fight that Earth just happened to fall in the middle of. Holding the line for humanity, Heath loses many of his friends, but his iron will doesn't succumb to the terrors he conquers daily as a Fear Agent.
As the battle rages on and humanity has regained a foothold in the battle, the Fear Agents amass an army of survivors and invade the Dressite base on the moon. Meanwhile on Earth, the Fear Agents discover one of their own is a traitor who uses the worm hole teleportation tech to lead the Dressites to their base, and has told the Dressites of the Fear Agents' plan to invade the moon base, allowing the aliens to set a clever trap which leads to a mass eradication of the Fear Agents, leaving Heath to believe he's one of a few remaining resistance members.
After losing so many of his comrades, Heath is enraged beyond reason and takes a bomb to the Dressite homeworld. Unaware of just how powerful the bomb is, he unleashes it while his allies are slaughtered on the moon and at home. When Heath returns to Earth, Charlotte leaves him-- the bomb killed trillions of innocent Dressite mothers and children. This leads to Heath's having a "capture alive if possible" bounty posted on his head by the Dressites, who hold no sympathy for the innocents murdered in their war on Earth, only wanting to punish him for the genocide of their own.
Tales of the Fear Agent: Twelve Steps in One (#16)
Heath works through a drunken haze to stop alien exploiters from endangering innocent lives all in the name of profit.17-21 Hatchet Job
Mara's past is revealed as a space pirate named Levi sells her family to a third race looking for a foothold on Earth, a cannibalistic race. Mara grows up, swearing to the Dressites she will do anything in their name for revenge on the pirate Levi.Heath goes to the Feeders' homeworld to find their natural predator, but he is stuck with his number one rival in his current life, Charlotte's new husband. The race on this planet targets the two for a battle to the death, but even as Heath is losing, his rival impales himself on Heath's weapon, revealing that the daughter he raised as his own is actually Heath's. Heath is sent free.
Meanwhile, Mara leads some Fear Agent survivors including Charlotte on a different mission. Charlotte catches Mara's act of treachery with the Dressites, that she will be given Levi's location in exchange for that of her fellow Fear Agents'. Charlotte's team ends up stranded on-planet, stuck with aliens that used religion to reunite with their god, but the experiment went awry and left them all soul-eating ghouls. Mara and Charlotte team up after losing some agents, and along the way, Mara sends a message to the past and hopes to make what will happen clear to a Heath in that timeline, but he disregarded her message.
Heath makes his way on-planet and saves Charlotte, and Mara escapes to the pirate ship. She discovers a Dressite telling one of the pirates about Heath's bounty, but kills the pirate before he can tell his comrades. Heath tries to convince Mara not to kill Levi since it will spiral into more Galactic civil war. Levi takes the distraction's opportunity to sneak a gun after Mara's laser blast takes one of his arms away. Levi shoots Mara in the back and kills her, and throws Heath out the airlock. Without his oxygen tank and running out of time, Heath admits to himself that he saw Levi taking the gun and let him shoot Mara anyway.
Collected editions
The series is being collected into a number of trade paperbacksTrade paperback (comics)
In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...
:
| # | Title | ISBN | Release Date | Collected Material |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Re-Ignition | ISBN 1593077645 | May 9, 2007 (Dark Horse) | Fear Agent #1-4 |
| 2 | My War | ISBN 1593077661 | May 23, 2007 | Fear Agent #5-10 |
| 3 | The Last Goodbye | ISBN 159307929X | March 12, 2008 | Fear Agent: The Last Goodbye #1-4* |
| 4 | Hatchet Job | ISBN 1593079745 | August 27, 2008 | Fear Agent #17-21 |
| 5 | I Against I | ISBN 1595822496 | January 15, 2010 | Fear Agent #22-27 |
| X | Tales of the Fear Agent | ISBN 1593079591 | May 7, 2008 | backup stories from Fear Agent #5-11, stories from MySpace MySpace Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors.... Dark Horse Presents Dark Horse Presents Dark Horse Presents was the first comic book published by Dark Horse Comics in 1986 and was their flagship title until its September 2000 cancellation. The second incarnation was published on MySpace, running from July 2007 until August 2010... #3-4, and Tales of the Fear Agent: Twelve Steps in One |
- Note: After completion of "The Last Goodbye", Dark Horse adopted a chronological numbering for the series in addition to the arc numbering, hence "The Last Goodbye" makes up issues #12-15.
External links
- Issue #1 available free from NewsaramaNewsaramaNewsarama is an American website that publishes news, interviews and essays about the American comic book industry.-History:Newsarama began in Summer 1995 as a series of Internet forum postings on the Prodigy comic-book message boards by fan Mike Doran. In these short messages. Doran shared...